The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

was done by Father Paissy, who then clothed the

deceased in his monastic garb and wrapped him in his cloak, which was,

according to custom, somewhat slit to allow of its being folded

about him in the form of a cross. On his head he put a hood with an

eight-cornered cross. The hood was left open and the dead man’s face

was covered with black gauze. In his hands was put an ikon of the

Saviour. Towards morning he was put in the coffin which had been

made ready long before. It was decided to leave the coffin all day

in the cell, in the larger room in which the elder used to receive his

visitors and fellow monks. As the deceased was a priest and monk of

the strictest rule, the Gospel, not the Psalter, had to be read over

his body by monks in holy orders. The reading was begun by Father

Iosif immediately after the requiem service. Father Paissy desired

later on to read the Gospel all day and night over his dead friend,

but for the present he, as well as the Father Superintendent of the

Hermitage, was very busy and occupied, for something extraordinary, an

unheard-of, even “unseemly” excitement and impatient expectation began

to be apparent in the monks, and the visitors from the monastery

hostels, and the crowds of people flocking from the town. And as

time went on, this grew more and more marked. Both the

Superintendent and Father Paissy did their utmost to calm the

general bustle and agitation.

 

When it was fully daylight, some people began bringing their sick,

in most cases children, with them from the town-as though they had

been waiting expressly for this moment to do so, evidently persuaded

that the dead elder’s remains had a power of healing, which would be

immediately made manifest in accordance with their faith. It was

only then apparent how unquestionably everyone in our town had

accepted Father Zossima during his lifetime as a great saint. And

those who came were far from being all of the humbler classes.

 

This intense expectation on the part of believers displayed with

such haste, such openness, even with impatience and almost insistence,

impressed Father Paissy as unseemly. Though he had long foreseen

something of the sort, the actual manifestation of the feeling was

beyond anything he had looked for. When he came across any of the

monks who displayed this excitement, Father Paissy began to reprove

them. “Such immediate expectation of something extraordinary,” he

said, “shows a levity, possible to worldly people but unseemly in us.”

 

But little attention was paid him and Father Paissy noticed it

uneasily. Yet he himself (if the whole truth must be told), secretly

at the bottom of his heart, cherished almost the same hopes and

could not but be aware of it, though he was indignant at the too

impatient expectation around him, and saw in it light-mindedness and

vanity. Nevertheless, it was particularly unpleasant to him to meet

certain persons, whose presence aroused in him great misgivings. In

the crowd in the dead man’s cell he noticed with inward aversion

(for which he immediately reproached himself) the presence of

Rakitin and of the monk from Obdorsk, who was still staying in the

monastery. Of both of them Father Paissy felt for some reason suddenly

suspicious-though, indeed, he might well have felt the same about

others.

 

The monk from Obdorsk was conspicuous as the most fussy in the

excited crowd. He was to be seen everywhere; everywhere he was

asking questions, everywhere he was listening, on all sides he was

whispering with a peculiar, mysterious air. His expression showed

the greatest impatience and even a sort of irritation.

 

As for Rakitin, he, as appeared later, had come so early to the

hermitage at the special request of Madame Hohlakov. As soon as that

good-hearted but weak-minded woman, who could not herself have been

admitted to the hermitage, waked and heard of the death of Father

Zossima, she was overtaken with such intense curiosity that she

promptly despatched Rakitin to the hermitage, to keep a careful look

out and report to her by letter ever half hour or so “everything

that takes place.” She regarded Rakitin as a most religious and devout

young man. He was particularly clever in getting round people and

assuming whatever part he thought most to their taste, if he

detected the slightest advantage to himself from doing so.

 

It was a bright, clear day, and many of the visitors were

thronging about the tombs, which were particularly numerous round

the church and scattered here and there about the hermitage. As he

walked round the hermitage, Father Paissy remembered Alyosha and

that he had not seen him for some time, not since the night. And he

had no sooner thought of him than he at once noticed him in the

farthest corner of the hermitage garden, sitting on the tombstone of a

monk who had been famous long ago for his saintliness. He sat with his

back to the hermitage and his face to the wall, and seemed to be

hiding behind the tombstone. Going up to him, Father Paissy saw that

he was weeping quietly but bitterly, with his face hidden in his

hands, and that his whole frame was shaking with sobs. Father Paissy

stood over him for a little.

 

“Enough, dear son, enough, dear,” he pronounced with feeling at

last. “Why do you weep? Rejoice and weep not. Don’t you know that this

is the greatest of his days? Think only where he is now, at this

moment!”

 

Alyosha glanced at him, uncovering his face, which was swollen

with crying like a child’s, but turned away at once without uttering a

word and hid his face in his hands again.

 

“Maybe it is well,” said Father Paissy thoughtfully; “weep if

you must; Christ has sent you those tears.”

 

“Your touching tears are but a relief to your spirit and will

serve to gladden your dear heart,” he added to himself, walking away

from Alyosha, and thinking lovingly of him. He moved away quickly,

however, for he felt that he too might weep looking at him.

 

Meanwhile the time was passing; the monastery services and the

requiems for the dead followed in their due course. Father Paissy

again took Father Iosif’s place by the coffin and began reading the

Gospel. But before three o’clock in the afternoon that something

took place to which I alluded at the end of the last book, something

so unexpected by all of us and so contrary to the general hope,

that, I repeat, this trivial incident has been minutely remembered

to this day in our town and all the surrounding neighbourhood. I may

add here, for myself personally, that I feel it almost repulsive

that event which caused such frivolous agitation and was such a

stumbling-block to many, though in reality it was the most natural and

trivial matter. I should, of course, have omitted all mention of it in

my story, if it had not exerted a very strong influence on the heart

and soul of the chief, though future, hero of my story, Alyosha,

forming a crisis and turning-point in his spiritual development,

giving a shock to his intellect, which finally strengthened it for the

rest of his life and gave it a definite aim.

 

And so, to return to our story. When before dawn they laid

Father Zossima’s body in the coffin and brought it into the front

room, the question of opening the windows was raised among those who

were around the coffin. But this suggestion made casually by someone

was unanswered and almost unnoticed. Some of those present may perhaps

have inwardly noticed it, only to reflect that the anticipation of

decay and corruption from the body of such a saint was an actual

absurdity, calling for compassion (if not a smile) for the lack of

faith and the frivolity it implied. For they expected something

quite different.

 

And, behold, soon after midday there were signs of something, at

first only observed in silence by those who came in and out and were

evidently each afraid to communicate the thought in his mind. But by

three o’clock those signs had become so clear and unmistakable, that

the news swiftly reached all the monks and visitors in the

hermitage, promptly penetrated to the monastery, throwing all the

monks into amazement, and finally, in the shortest possible time,

spread to the town, exciting everyone in it, believers and unbelievers

alike. The unbelievers rejoiced, and as for the believers some of them

rejoiced even more than the unbelievers, for “men love the downfall

and disgrace of the righteous,” as the deceased elder had said in

one of his exhortations.

 

The fact is that a smell of decomposition began to come from the

coffin, growing gradually more marked, and by three o’clock it was

quite unmistakable. In all the past history of our monastery, no

such scandal could be recalled, and in no other circumstances could

such a scandal have been possible, as showed itself in unseemly

disorder immediately after this discovery among the very monks

themselves. Afterwards, even many years afterwards, some sensible

monks were amazed and horrified, when they recalled that day, that the

scandal could have reached such proportions. For in the past, monks of

very holy life had died, God-fearing old men, whose saintliness was

acknowledged by all, yet from their humble coffins, too, the breath of

corruption had come, naturally, as from all dead bodies, but that

had caused no scandal nor even the slightest excitement. Of course,

there had been, in former times, saints in the monastery whose

memory was carefully preserved and whose relics, according to

tradition, showed no signs of corruption. This fact was regarded by

the monks as touching and mysterious, and the tradition of it was

cherished as something blessed and miraculous, and as a promise, by

God’s grace, of still greater glory from their tombs in the future.

 

One such, whose memory was particularly cherished, was an old

monk, Job, who had died seventy years before at the age of a hundred

and five. He had been a celebrated ascetic, rigid in fasting and

silence, and his tomb was pointed out to all visitors on their arrival

with peculiar respect and mysterious hints of great hopes connected

with it. (That was the very tomb on which Father Paissy had found

Alyosha sitting in the morning.) Another memory cherished in the

monastery was that of the famous Father Varsonofy, who was only

recently dead and had preceded Father Zossima in the eldership. He was

reverenced during his lifetime as a crazy saint by all the pilgrims to

the monastery. There was a tradition that both of these had lain in

their coffins as though alive, that they had shown no signs of

decomposition when they were buried and that there had been a holy

light in their faces. And some people even insisted that a sweet

fragrance came from their bodies.

 

Yet, in spite of these edifying memories, it would be difficult to

explain the frivolity, absurdity and malice that were manifested

beside the coffin of Father Zossima. It is my private opinion that

several different causes were simultaneously at work, one of which was

the deeply rooted hostility to the institution of elders as a

pernicious innovation, an antipathy hidden deep in the hearts of

many of the monks. Even more powerful was jealousy of the dead man’s

saintliness, so firmly established during lifetime that it was

almost a forbidden thing to question it. For though the late elder had

won over many hearts, more by love than by miracles, and had

gathered round him a mass of loving adherents, none the less, in fact,

rather the more on that account he had awakened jealousy and so had

come